FreeBSD Update

On August 31st, I committed the FreeBSD Update 2.0 build and client code to the FreeBSD CVS repositories. I'll be MFCing the client code to RELENG_6 tomorrow so that FreeBSD Update can be part of FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE. This is the largest part of what I wanted to get done over the summer, so I'm glad that I've finished it.

Unfortunately, this ended up taking rather longer than I expected; part of this, as I mentioned earlier, is due to the slow feedback time of testing build code which takes two hours or more, while part of it is because it took me much longer than it should have taken to sort out how the client-side "IgnorePaths", "UpdateIfUnmodified", "AllowAdd", "AllowDelete", and "KeepModifiedMetadata" options should interact with each other. The questions of "What when users decide to delete sendmail?" and "What if a security or errata update creates a new file, and then a later update modifies that file?" caused me particular headaches. On the positive side, spending a long time thinking about issues like this means that I'm fairly confident that FreeBSD Update can gracefully handle whatever crazy situations users throw at it.

As a result of spending longer than I expected on FreeBSD Update, as well as spending time producing code for upgrading between FreeBSD versions -- expect to see more of this as the FreeBSD 6.2 release cycle starts -- I haven't had time for some of the work I wanted to get done on Portsnap. Even though my paid 4 months of FreeBSD development are over, I expect to continue spending most of my time working to get this done, at least for the immediate future: I have enough money left over from the summer that I don't need to get a new job immediately, and I'm still waiting for one or more job offers before I decide what I'll be doing for the next year, so I might as well take advantage of the time.

Posted at 2006-09-01 13:45 | Permanent link | Comments
blog comments powered by Disqus

Recent posts

Monthly Archives

Yearly Archives


RSS